1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a quantum dot-tunnel device which forms quantum dots for confining electrons three-dimensionally and to an information processing apparatus and method using the same.
2. Description of the Related Art
Metallization technology is essential for connecting devices in current-day VLSI technology. Along with the increasingly higher degrees of integration of devices, the percentage of the area occupied by metal interconnection portions on the wafer has increased. If the rate of occupancy of the metal interconnections grows higher in this way, these metal interconnections will conversely end up limiting the speed of information processing.
Therefore, integrated circuits which are connected by light, rather than connected by electricity using metal films and electroconductive films, are being considered. For example, the IEEE Journal of Solid State Circuits, Vol. 25, No. 1, p. 11 to 18 (1990), "Design of 4-kbit.times.4-Layer Optically Coupled Three-Dimensional Common Memory for Parallel Processor System" reports a memory device which transfers signals between three-dimensional integrated circuits by optical energy.
However, even with an optical energy integrated circuit (OEIC) etc., the basic circuit construction is an extension of the conventional circuit construction and high speed operation is displayed by only a part of the hardware. For example, if OEIC's are used to try to solve basic problems of the theory of functions or fluid dynamics by numeral calculation, there are cases where the amount of calculation will be large and the solution will not be converged upon even using an algorithm by the differential calculus method or Monte Carlo method and there are limits to the calculation ability.